10

  More or less meanwhile, aboard the speeding Falcon:

  Filimar looked up from peeling tubers, a task that he managed about as well (and as happily) as he’d polished the silver on Deathstroke. Filno slouched at a booth in the scout ship’s cramped galley, performing the absolute minimum work required by that drekking pest, Hallan Gelfrin.

  Valerian sat across the table from his furious heart-brother, Filimar’s paring knife, pot and stacked vegetables. He was present in flesh but not really attending. The young mage had recycled himself to the past so often that conversation was nearly impossible. It was tough to keep track of Filimar’s endless complaints between bouts of deep study.

  Miri rattled and banged at the spirit stove nearby, getting supper for captain and crew. She stood on a three-legged stool, humming something that only added to Filimar’s sense of injustice. Why should everyone else be content?

  “I say, Valno,” snapped the grumpy elf-lord. “Are you even listening?”

  He leaned forward over the wooden table, pointing at Val with a stabbed and accusing tuber.

  “Uhn?” grunted his blond, northern friend, jerking suddenly back to the moment. “Erm… yes, of course. Hallan’s clearly gone mad with power, and he’s working you into the ground like a fiendish drow slave-driver.”

  Filimar scowled at Valerian, blue eyes narrowing angrily in that elegant, fey-handsome countenance.

  “That’s not what I said, you idiot!” he shot back, out of sorts as a turfed-up badger.

  Valerian shook his head to break free of the Purple Grimoire, which was still in his nice, quiet raven-loft cell. Tried again, heroically.

  “Right, erm… no one needs that many roots in their stew?”

  “No!”

  Filimar smashed his paring knife clear through the tuber and into the tabletop, where it stuck fast. But for a little, he’d have plunged it into Val, thought the distracted mage.

  “I asked how you know that you’re actually tracking Nalderick, you arse!”

  Well, as to that… Valerian frowned; all at once fully alert and attentive.

  “I placed a mage-trace on him, Filno. The gods’ curse may hide him from kin-sense, but the path of that trace is quite clear on my internal map.”

  Filimar’s mouth twisted to one side. He sat back and then folded both arms on his chest, scattering vegetables everywhere.

  “A cloak pin, I believe?”

  Val nodded, beginning to feel uneasy.

  “Annnd… there’s no way at all that a broke, lost, friendless and cursed former elf would trade a loaned possession for money or food?” demanded the raven-haired Arvendahl lordling.

  Valerian opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again, for Filimar wasn’t through speaking.

  “You said that the mage-trace jumped from outside your hunting camp to somewhere under the palace, correct?”

  Val nodded again, increasingly worried.

  “Aye, but the others know about that, and they’ve surely checked. They would have told me so, if Nalderick was caught again,” he protested, as Filimar drove home the point.

  “Uh-huh. All I’m saying, Valno, is that you’re tracking an object, not the prince you gave it to. He may not even be wearing the thing any longer.”

  Very true. And unsettling.

  “Need to find something else,” whispered the mage, more bothered than ever. “Naldo still has his faerie pockets, even if he can’t reach them. I could track something in there, if it is well enough known to me.”

  Filimar scooped up the spilt vegetables with a magical gesture, sending them swirling around through the air and into Valerian’s sudden, razor-sharp blade sigil. What emerged through their paired spells was a stack of neatly peeled and chopped tubers. These snaked their way into Miri’s bubbling stew pot, raising a cloud of fragrant, warm steam.

  “Thank you, Milords,” said the girl, who’d been listening in.

  That was not the way Filimar was meant to accomplish his task, and he’d surely pay for it later… unless he could find a way off of the Falcon, right the drek now.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “I know,” he suggested, smiling craftily. “Try that old junior league trophy cup, from our first match as a team. Nalderick made us all swear on the wretched thing.”

  “…That we’d play for the Imperials, or not at all, forever,” finished Valerian, searching around with his magical senses, hunting a two-handled faerie-gold cup. Then,

  “I’ve got it, but… it isn’t at Rich Port or back in the palace, either. It’s well north of here, deep in the mainland.”

  “Show me,” urged Filimar, leaning forward to thrust out a slim, long-fingered hand.

  Valerian took his heart-brother’s offered grip, sharing his mental map of the trophy’s location. Filimar laid a memorized navigational chart atop that, saying triumphantly,

  “Longshore! Where no one goes, ever, unless they’ve been sentenced. Father’s chart indicates heavy draconic activity, which is reason enough to steer clear.”

  “Unless one is trying to break a curse,” mused Val, expanding the chart with his free hand.

  “He’ll be killed,” stated Filimar, clasping tight, then releasing. “Those dragons will freeze him to cubes and then serve him for mid-meal. Nalderick hasn’t a goblin’s chance in a beauty contest, Valno. We step in, or he dies.”

  Falcon’s blue eye drifted over the wooden bulkhead to stop at their booth, drawn by their magic and plotting. Valerian hastily conjured a stack of books and some parsnips. Filimar picked up his paring knife, while Miri resumed stirring and humming, all of them looking perfectly busy and innocent. Their act didn’t fool Speedy, though. At least, not at once.

  Valerian demonstrated a few flashy third-level spells, juggling fireballs and lightning to prove he’d been studying. He nodded and smiled at the suspicious blue orb, doing his best to radiate hard work and clean thoughts, till it glided off again.

  Filimar kept his eyes down until it was out of the galley, industriously peeling a new stack of vegetables. Then, lifting his head to stare at Val, he insisted,

  “You swore that you’d guard him, and you know what the stakes are, Valno. I can help, and I will. The only question is, have you got the stones to jump ship and save our team captain?”

  XXXXXXXXXXXX

  On the southern shore of Deepwater Tarn, creeping back into the town:

  Wenchie, Bert, Trixie and Curtis had saved Derrick’s life with their fire and grog, but it was time to move on. He mined them for all they knew of this plague-spawning dragon (which wasn’t much). No matter, he thought. He’d been a prince and an elf. He’d ridden on shining Devrax with his grandfather, as thousands of people waved and cheered for him, down below.

  He’d been Nalderick Valinor ob Korvin, Jewel of the Realm and Prince Attendant. Now he was only Lud Derrick the vagabond… but surely able to handle one smallish white drake, curse or no curse. Strategy, that was the thing… and maybe a few purloined weapons.

  He’d lost his poker and pot-lid escaping the Last Gasp Inn. Derrick was going to need replacement weapons and armor. There was only one place to find such things in benighted, mucky Longshore, though, and that was the local guard station (according to Wenchie, who often met clients, out back).

  Derrick had no wealth or authority, which meant that he’d just have to steal what he needed, with help from his shifty new friends.

  “Create a distraction in several places at once,” he urged Bert, Trixie, Curtis and Wenchie. “The guards will go rushing out of their station, leaving the place unguarded. I’ll just nip in, snatch what I need and be off.”

  “Easy as that, uh?” scoffed Curtis, spitting onto the snow as they edged their way back into town through a dockside alley.

  “Easier,” promised Derrick, still limping on alternate feet. Kia was curled up asleep in his borrowed tunic, but she was sure to be hungry again very soon. Where were the rats or unguarded fish pies when you needed them? Hunger wasn’t his only concern, though. The sleet had let up, but everything glittered with heavy, slick ice, and the cold was intense, making Derrick shiver and hunch.

  “R- Remember,” he whispered, raising a cloud of steamy-white breath. “You’re g- going for nuisance, not jail time, so don’t set the warehouse on fire, or anything.”

  Bert chuckled and rubbed his veiny old hands together, stumping along through the dirty snow at Derrick’s right side.

  “That’d wake ‘em up, fer sure,” cackled the nearly toothless old man.

  “Keep us warm fer a spell, too, and the town pokey’s better ‘n freezin’ ter death on the lake shore,” said Trixie, feeling around in her apron for matches and tinder.

  Wenchie sighed and rubbed her sore back, but then she craned past Curtis to stare at the grim former prince.

  “Anyhow, once ya ’ve pinched some gear and performed yer great deed, ya ’d come back ter free us, right, Lud Derrick?”

  “Of c- course,” he replied stoutly, giving that tired and battered mortal a smile. “My word is my b- bond, good woman. In, out, one dragon slain, one blight ended, and then you’ll be not only free, but r- rewarded. I promise you.”

  Big, bearded Curtis wasn’t convinced, but he went along anyhow.

  “I were a guard m’ self,” he admitted. “Out in Luftig, afore the drink got ahold o’ me. I got a key you could use. Haven’t been able ter sell it.”

  Cocking a shaggy eyebrow, Curtis pulled out a big iron key. It was longer than Derrick’s forefinger, with a crossed fish-spear device on its grip, and a deeply toothed shaft.

  “This ‘ere opens th’ armory back in Fish-town… but I dunno how good it be, here. Might work a treat, or pry off the lock, at least.”

  Derrick accepted the key with a smile, nodding graciously.

  “I shall m- make good use of it,” he declared, tucking that big iron tool into Kia’s sling (once pushing it at his inaccessible faerie pockets failed to make the thing vanish). The others chuckled, watching as Derrick bent to retrieve the key from knee-deep snow.

  “Your faith in me is not misplaced, good people,” he insisted, flapping his arms and blowing on his fingers to warm himself.

  “Ain’t faith,” chortled Bert, taking one of Trixie’s handmade matches and a fistful of tree-bark tinder. “Tis pure mischief n’ watchin’ them comf’trable townsfolk scurry like ants ter put out a fire.”

  Derrick might ‘ve had second thoughts, then, but it was already too late. Bert, Trixie, Curtis and Wenchie were padding off through the snow, ready to spark his distraction.

  “It’ll come right,” murmured the former prince. “Once my c- curse is lifted and I am an elf once again, I’ll send a t- team of dwarf engineers to rebuild their warehouse and get this lot out of prison.”

  Seemed like the thing to do at the time, but what Derrick didn’t know was that an old trophy had given his presence away to those who were seeking him.

  …that Jonex the Undying kept a series of nervous and short-lived oracles scrying for possible trouble, day and night, leading first to the Shop of True Need, and then to a distant, cold shore.

  …that most of the Tarandahls had been sent to a beach just a stone’s throw from the ruins of Friesborg.

  …and that curses are not so easily broken. Not when you started with theft and ended in flame.